Karma

[Jundo]

Re: Karma

I will toss in what I think may be the best 'evidence' for 'literal rebirth' ...

... to wit ...

... since we, you and me, seem to be beneficiaries of the outlandish fact that we've popped up, alive and sentient, in the middle of time and space despite the seeming unlikelihood of that having happened even once ...

... due to all the amazing conditions needed for us to happen even once having happened just right for us to happen ...

... with never one possible event needed for our births to have failed, even once, to happen right on time and in just the right way (otherwise, one might assume, we would not be here talking about it) ...

... then, since something so seemingly silly and improbable happened once ...

... well then, might as well happen twice.

... That would be just as silly and outlandish!

Kind of like going to a casino and rolling, for 13.7 billion years, winning hand after winning hand of cards ... without any one of which (any one right outcome in the chain of events) ... we would not be collecting the jackpot of life right now.

If one were to win such an amazing string of winning hands ... never a miss ... not even once for so many years ...

... one might be tempted to believe the cards are loaded in some way.

And if the cards are loaded in some way to allow such a string of wins, well ...

... I think I will just chop wood and fetch water, and let the cards play themselves out.

Gassho, J

[Ankai]

Re: Karma

Kind of like going to a casino and rolling, for 13.7 billion years, winning hand after winning hand of cards ... without any one of which (any one right outcome in the chain of events) ... we would not be collecting the jackpot of life right now.

If one were to win such an amazing string of winning hands ... never a miss ... not even once for so many years ...

... one might be tempted to believe the cards are loaded in some way.


If you're rolling the cards, I can see why winning is elusive...

[Jundo]

Re: Karma

Kind of like going to a casino and rolling, for 13.7 billion years, winning hand after winning hand of cards ... without any one of which (any one right outcome in the chain of events) ... we would not be collecting the jackpot of life right now.

If one were to win such an amazing string of winning hands ... never a miss ... not even once for so many years ...

... one might be tempted to believe the cards are loaded in some way.


If you're rolling the cards, I can see why winning is elusive...

In some alternate universes ... cards are rolled. 8)

[Jundo]

Re: Karma

Yes. a tree leafing ...

[disastermouse]

Re: Karma

The great teacher Daido Loori indicated quite often that he regarded reincarnation as doubtful, and from his viewpoint somewhat irrelevant. From where I stand, the whole possibility of karma operating as an inexorable law of cause and effect is self-evidently, utterly and completely false unless there is reincarnation. Why? Well, is it not eminently clear to anyone with eyes that in this life, many millions of people who do very bad shit - again and again and again - thrive; while many millions who live wonderfully compassionate and generous lives suffer endlessly? So, no reincarnation, no karma. If the doers of bad shit so obviously don't get their recompense here and now, where do they get it? Without reincarnation, they don't, or at least, they can't. When I ask about this matter in the sanghas I visit, the sound of brooms sweeping dirt under the carpet is heard loud and clear. Or I am given evasive bollocks about taking this contradiction as a koan. I recall the words of a feminist practitioner who tried to ask about the suppression of women in Zen only to be told by her male teacher "We're all women here" or words to that effect. She got pissed and wrote "Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Masters". If I had the talent and learning, I'd write a little book called "Karma and Reincarnation: You Can't Have One Without The Other". Instead, I'd like to hear from any one of the millions of practitioners who understand more than I ever will about the dharma, and who can shed light on this problem. Thanks.

Scripturally, I don't know where to direct you. From experience, I can say that the karma you may think about as a concept is not really karma. Regarding reincarnation - the Buddha never taught it. What he taught was rebirth. What's the difference?

When you go to sleep, where do you go? When you wake up, where is the guy who went to sleep eight hours earlier? If you think that there's some essential 'you-ness' that made the leap from pre-sleeping to post-waking - that's at best an incomplete view and at worst a completely wrong view. And yet, when you wake up, you wake up in the bed that the guy from last night rested his body upon. If the guy from last night drank too much wine, in the morning there's a hangover.

Most importantly though, whether you commit yourself to the wrong view of reincarnation or are skeptical of the right view of rebirth - still, the only place you can witness karma is right here and now anyway. Any speculation about future lives is just that - speculation. People who build up huge speculative fantasies about the tortures or rewards that people experience in 'future lives' - they're caught by a fiction. People who reduce the entire world to a nihilistic ball of 'frisky dust' (borrowed from Wilber - don't shoot) are likewise caught by a fiction.

All karmas, dharmas, delusions, and rebirth happen only and always in this moment. This one, right here. That said, it doesn't mean you have to slavishly concentrate only on this moment either. I think a wise person uses abstract thoughts to propose a recipe for approaching an artificially limited problem for a specific purpose. If the purpose is illuminated by right view, there's no problem. If the purpose itself is come upon by a belief that artificially limited situations are actually the whole situation - then this misapprehension causes problems - and those problems are called 'karma'. Karma is an adhesive force that binds you to wrong view. A belief in a string of successive lives is not required to feel the pain of karma and delusion.

As always, IMHO.

[Omoi Otoshi]

Re: Karma

But if there's no individual self, no permanent soul, what is it that is being reborn? What is it that has a primary existance of its own? :?

For the time being I prefer to view Karma as a purely psychological mechanism, even though that might not be entirely according to buddhist doctrine. If you do nasty things, a normal person gets unbalanced, feels guilt and creates his own misfortune. If you do purely altruistic deeds (these are rare I suspect, as we often delude ourself when we do 'good') you feel self-confident, you appear attractive, you feel you are entitled to good things happening to you. And your actions also affect other people, that may feel indebted to you, impressed by you, angered by you. What about a sociopath (psychopath) that hurts and manipulates other people, but doesn't care one bit? Does he get bad Karma? If it's all about psychology, he will get some bad effects from people who want to get back at him, but he won't create any bad effects for himself, like a normal person might.

Anyway, the exact mechanism is not important I feel. Maybe we will understand Karma if and when we attain Buddhahood. Until then our enlightenment is miniscule and our ideas just speculative.

/Pontus

[ghop]

Re: Karma

As always, IMHO.

Wait! I know that voice!

And now (showing my age) I'm hearing the theme song to "Welcome Back Kotter" playing in my head.

Either way, welcome back. You never really left.

gassho
Greg

[Ankai]

Re: Karma

If you swipe at a wasp, you might get stung. You might not.
If you do absolutely nothing to a wwasp, you might get stung. You might not.
Karma.

[anista]

Re: Karma

But if there's no individual self, no permanent soul, what is it that is being reborn? What is it that has a primary existance of its own? :?

Nothing has a primary existence of its own; to think that rebirth has anything to do with something permanent being reincarnated is not a Buddhist notion. In classical rebirth (for a lack of a better term) the skandhas that make up "you" is part of the rising of skandhas that make up a new being, as well as they are part of the continuing creation of "you". Which means that a new sentient being is not entirely new, yet not entirely you. It's a natural continuation of the skandhas that made you into you.

The problem, in my experience, is when we see (even when we know it's not true) our selves as being somewhat permanent. In that case, rebirth is a strange notion. However, when you see "you" as merely a collection of skandhas, always fleeting, always being reborn every second, then that more or less stable heap could be imagined being continued somewhere else, after this "me" or this "you" is gone.

The fleeting heap just keeps going.

[Omoi Otoshi]

Re: Karma

Ah, yes! Thank you!
Very well put.

I remember reading about the five aggregates, Skandhas, a while back, but it still has not sunk in entirely. I need to spend some time with the Heart Sutra and "form is emptiness, emptiness is form" some day!



I found this on a quick search on Google:
http://buddhism.about.com/od/whatisthes ... e_Self.htm

"If there is no soul, what is it that is reborn, one might ask.

Well, there is nothing to be reborn.

When life ceases the kammic energy re-materializes itself in another form. As Bhikkhu Silacara says: "Unseen it passes whithersoever the conditions appropriate to its visible manifestation are present. Here showing itself as a tiny gnat or worm, there making its presence known in the dazzling magnificence of a Deva or an Archangel's existence. When one mode of its manifestation ceases it merely passes on, and where suitable circumstances offer, reveals itself afresh in another name or form."

Birth is the arising of the psycho-physical phenomena. Death is merely the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon.

Just as the arising of a physical state is conditioned by a preceding state as its cause, so the appearance of psycho-physical phenomena is conditioned by cause anterior to its birth. As the process of one life-span is possible without a permanent entity passing from one thought-moment to another, so a series of life-processes is possible without an immortal soul to transmigrate from one existence to another.

Buddhism does not totally deny the existence of a personality in an empirical sense. It only attempts to show that it does not exist in an ultimate sense. The Buddhist philosophical term for an individual is santana, i.e., a flux or a continuity. It includes the mental and physical elements as well. The kammic force of each individual binds the elements together. This uninterrupted flux or continuity of psycho-physical phenomenon, which is conditioned by kamma, and not limited only to the present life, but having its source in the beginningless past and its continuation in the future — is the Buddhist substitute for the permanent ego or the immortal soul of other religions."

Gassho,
Pontus

[Rich]

Re: Karma

But if there's no individual self, no permanent soul, what is it that is being reborn? What is it that has a primary existance of its own? :?

Nothing has a primary existence of its own; to think that rebirth has anything to do with something permanent being reincarnated is not a Buddhist notion. In classical rebirth (for a lack of a better term) the skandhas that make up "you" is part of the rising of skandhas that make up a new being, as well as they are part of the continuing creation of "you". Which means that a new sentient being is not entirely new, yet not entirely you. It's a natural continuation of the skandhas that made you into you.

The problem, in my experience, is when we see (even when we know it's not true) our selves as being somewhat permanent. In that case, rebirth is a strange notion. However, when you see "you" as merely a collection of skandhas, always fleeting, always being reborn every second, then that more or less stable heap could be imagined being continued somewhere else, after this "me" or this "you" is gone.

The fleeting heap just keeps going.

Thanks for explaining. This must be why sometimes I'm called 'a heap of shit' or full of shit :lol:

[Nenka]

Re: Karma

Philip Kapleau had an interesting take on rebirth . . . he used the metaphor of a giant pool of molten metal from which little Buddha statues are being made and melted down all the time. Like it isn't just the metal from one Buddha being made into another; it all goes back into and comes out of the pool.

Hey, are we all just part of a cosmic recycling program? 8)

[Omoi Otoshi]

Re: Karma

Heaps of waste..? :shock: :? :lol:

Interesting metaphor! But I like the metaphor of the waves and the ocean better. We are all waves that rise from the ocean and ask "who am I?" before we return into the sea. Every moment is a new wave. Every lifetime is a wave. The wave is form. The sea is emptiness. What is the wind that is the cause and condition of the raising of the wave?

Gassho,
Pontus

[Onshin]

Re: Karma

I remember in a talk Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett describing rebirthlike mains electricity, when life comes along it plugs into this mains of conciousness, when it dies it just unplugs and another life plugs in somewhere else, no individual 'me' to flow along to the next life.

As for the waves, it was waves that got me to make the effort to seek out a zen group. I was in a town with only Tibetan Buddhist groups in, the one I was going to every week was small but full of lovely people. When I was about to go for refuge with thier Lama in Cambridge I started meditating on the beach,( mainly to get away at lunchtime from a job I really did not suit), while watching the waves break and disappear back into the sea, all my years of zen study came to me and I realized that I was just grabbing the first Buddhism to come along, so I travelled all the way up to Throssel, it was like coming home.

Sorry, I rambled a bit there ops: .

Gassho

Joe

[nealc]

Re: Karma

i like to think about the fact that they say all the molecules in your body change over something like 7 years, and that, for instance, everyone has breathed some of the air molecules that caesar (or likely buddha) breathed as they circulate in the atmosphere. every molecule of every thing we eat passes through our body, becomes part of the molecular structure of our eyes or brain through digestion and growth. so perhaps some molecules of the egg i ate this morning were part of a chicken living on a chicken farm, and the eggs i ate last week which are now part of my eyes and brain and fingers were part of a chicken that died last month, but those old parts of that chicken that passed into her eggs and then to my plate are alive in me, looking at this monitor and typing on this keyboard, breathing perhaps a molecule of air that louis xiv or caesar or buddha or some egyptian slave breathed centuries ago.. perhaps the chicken's karma and mine are so linked that we are now in the same body, if i do some metta practice we feel better and if i am angry with someone we feel worse..